Four Napoli and three Eintracht Frankfurt fans were arrested on Thursday following Wednesday’s clashes in Naples. The German fans flouted a travel ban and clashed with local fans and the police before their Champions League match.
A Naples court had issued a travel ban for the German fans. Despite the ban, hundreds of Germans arrived in Naples for the match. As a consequence, there were running battles in the streets.
Six police were hurt in the clashes, officials said Thursday.
Running battles on Naples streets
Hundreds of fans fought running battles in the streets with three police cars damaged. One of them was set on fire.
The identification of all Eintracht Frankfurt fans after yesterday’s riots in Naples is underway. Some 470 German ultras were taken from their hotels to police offices for identification procedures. 120 were accompanied in the early hours of the night to the police station in Frosinone, between Naples and Rome, and detained for identification. They were then escorted to Fiumicino airport and left Italy.
Another 350 ultras are still at the police station in Salerno to be identified.
Naples Prefect Claudio Palomba told a press conference: “I would like to thank the police forces in Naples who worked all day yesterday and in the end managed, until late at night, to avoid the moment of contact between the two opposing fans of Frankfurt and Naples”.
He added: “‘Yesterday’s procession of Germans was not stopped by the police. In the end nothing happened at that march yesterday. It was a procession of unarmed people. If we had stopped the procession and groups of 30-50 people had gone around it would have been more difficult to control them”.
Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi described as “unacceptable” the words of UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin who had branded the Naples court travel ban for the German fans as “intolerable”.
Napoli won 3-0 on the night and 5-0 on aggregate. They are in the Champions League quarterfinals for the first time. They join AC Milan and Inter Milan, meaning there are three Italian teams in the quarters for the first time since 2006.
